[StBernard] Remembering 9/11

[Westley Annis]

God Squad

By Rabbi Marc Gellman, Tribune Media Services 

Ten years ago, I was the president of the New York Board of Rabbis. In that
capacity, I was asked to deliver the Jewish prayer during the Prayer for
America service at Yankee Stadium Sept. 24, 2001 . I present it to you here.


I was broken then, and though I'm stronger at the broken places now, I still
remember the power of the collective sense of grief, anger and fear that
gripped us all. On that day, we thought 6,000 people had died. Other than
that, I still believe every word I spoke. May God bless all the mourners of
9/11, and may God bless America. -- Marc 

XXX 

On that day, 6,000 people did not die. On that day, one person died, 6,000
times. We must understand this and all catastrophes in such a way, for big
numbers only numb us to the true measure of mass murder. 

We say 6,000, or we say 6 million died, and the saying and the numbers
explain nothing except how much death came in how short a time. Such big
numbers sound more like scores or ledger entries than deaths. The real
horror of that day lies not in its bigness but in its smallness, in the
small, searing death of one person, 6,000 times. 

And that one person was not a number but our father or our mother, our
grandpa or grandma, our brother or sister, our cousin, or uncle or aunt, our
friend or our lover, our neighbor or our co-worker, the gal who delivered
our mail, or the guy who put out our fires or arrested the bad guys in our
town. And the death of each and every one of them alone would be worthy of
such a gathering and such a grief. 

Our sages taught that when one kills a single person it is like killing the
whole world altogether, and when one saves a single person it is like saving
the whole world altogether. Last week, over 6,000 worlds were killed and
thank the Lord, a few, too few, worlds were saved by heroes, most of whom
will never be known. The dimensions of last week's horror only become fully
drawn when we enter each murdered world one world at a time. 

The Talmud, and the African Masai tribe both teach a simple wisdom for our
wounded world: "Sticks alone can be broken by a child, but sticks in a
bundle are unbreakable." The fears and sorrows of this moment are so heavy
they can break us if we try to bear them alone. But if we are bundled
together, if we stick together, we are unbreakable and we shall do far more
than merely survive; we shall overcome. 

We shall overcome the forces of hatred without allowing hatred to unbundle
us. We shall overcome the forces of terror without allowing fear to unbundle
us. So in all our comings and our goings from this time forth, let us
remember that the person next to you, in front of you, behind you, is not
merely an obstacle to your free and unfettered life. They are a part of our
American bundle that keeps each of us from breaking. 

Let us never again view our fellow New Yorkers, our fellow Americans, our
fellow members of the human community of the world, as limitations on our
life, but rather as the moral twine that binds us and saves us and delivers
us from evil. 

For some of us, the source of that strength, the twine that binds us and
bundles us, is not just community but community under God, and above all
that religious belief shared by all the Abrahamic faiths that each and every
human being is made in the image of God. And also, we people of faith share
the belief that a good God will not allow evil to win out over goodness,
hate over hope and death over life. History proves this, but for religious
people of all faiths, the proof comes from the way we know that we are
bundled up in God's love, and the way we know that our dear ones who have
died are now wrapped up in the bundle of eternal life in the World to Come,
in Heaven, and there they wait for us, waiting to fulfill the promise that
we will not be separated forever from those we love. 

And for those who cannot find hope through faith, I say to you that you are
a part of our bundle, too. For the important task in our spiritual journey
now is not for all of us to agree that the name for hope is God. The main
task now is to agree that hope was not one of the worlds destroyed on that
day. The day when 6,000 people did not die, but one person died, 6,000
times. 

Job was innocent and he suffered and he found hope sitting in his own pile
of dust and ashes and his hope must be our own: "For there is hope of a
tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender
branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth,
and the stock thereof die in the ground; Yet through the scent of water it
will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant." (Job 14:7) 

Dear God, we have surely been cut down, but our roots are deep in you. And
today, yes, today, we can smell the scent of water, because today we are
sticks in a bundle and today we are unbreakable. Amen. 

(Send QUESTIONS ONLY to The God Squad, c/o Tribune Media Services, 2225
Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207, or email them to
godsquadquestion at aol.com. 


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